The laboratory of Babel: highlighting community needs for integrated materials data management

Automated experimentation methods are unlocking a new data-rich research paradigm in materials science that promises to accelerate the pace of materials discovery. However, if our data management practices do not keep pace with progress in automation, this revolution threatens to drown us in unusable data. In this perspective, we highlight the need to update data management practices to track, organize, process, and share data collected from laboratories with deeply integrated automation equipment. We argue that a holistic approach to data management that integrates multiple scales (experiment, group and community scales) is needed. We propose a vision for what this integrated data future could look like and compare existing work against this vision to find gaps in currently available data management tools. To realize this vision, we believe that development of standard protocols for communicating with equipment and data sharing, the development of new open-source software tools for managing data in research groups, and leadership and direction from funding agencies and other organizations are needed. In this perspective, we highlight the need to integrate data management infrastructure across scales to best take advantage of advancements in automated and autonomous experimental methods in materials science.